Mr. Putin prevailed, with his preferred candidate defeating one of his fiercest critics, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and handing him a victory on the cultural front.

President Barack Obama

Associated Press

Earlier this month, Mr. Kasparov spoke about his underdog campaign in an interview during the world chess team tournament hosted by this Arctic city (an event inexplicably ignored by the major TV networks). He also made plain he has no great sympathy for the way President Barack Obama is managing the showdown with Mr. Putin in Ukraine.

“If Obama and (British Prime Minister David) Cameron were leading their respective countries in the 1980s, I would still be playing chess under the Soviet flag,” said Mr. Kasparov, who grew up in the old Soviet Union and who now lives in Manhattan. “We see reactions, but we do not see leadership.”

That gets at an important question: Do American voters grasp the stakes involved in the conflicts roiling the Middle East, Asia and – well – virtually anywhere else you look? Are they prepared to elevate foreign policy to a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign?

That’s not the norm. Pocketbook concerns are typically what animate American voters in presidential races. Yet there are signs that what’s happening abroad will have more urgency when Americans pick a successor to Mr. Obama.

Images are powerful things and the gruesome video of a hooded Islamist State thug beheading American journalist James Foley could drive home to everyday Americans that the extremist group’s march across Iraq and Syria is very much their concern.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Getty Images

What’s more, the potential candidates seem primed to confront one another on foreign policy once the ’16 race starts up. In her interview this month with the Atlantic, Democrat Hillary Clinton indicated she would be far more interventionist than Mr. Obama. In pointed terms, she suggested the president missed the moment when he failed to arm the moderate Syrian rebels fighting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad at an earlier stage.

She said “the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”

Dismissing one of the more colorful tenets of Mr. Obama’s foreign-policy approach — “Don’t do stupid stuff” — she said the phrase doesn’t amount to “an organizing principle” for “great nations.”

Mrs. Clinton’s muscular vision of the U.S. role in the world could create one of the sharpest general election differences between herself and a potential Republican opponent.

Sen. Rand Paul

AP

Consider Rand Paul. On “Meet the Press” this week, the Kentucky Republican senator said Mrs. Clinton was looking like a “war hawk.” Mr. Paul has called for slashing foreign aid and has shown a wariness toward military engagements.

“If you wanna see a transformational election in our country, let the Democrats put forward a war hawk like Hillary Clinton, and you’ll see a transformation like you’ve never seen,” Mr. Paul said.

Doubling down, he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that took aim at Mrs. Clinton for wanting to “shoot first in Syria before asking some important questions.” Calling her an “interventionist,” Mr. Paul wrote that toppling Mr. Assad might only have cleared a path for extremists fighting to gain power in Syria.

About Washington Wire

Washington Wire is one of the oldest standing features in American journalism. Since the Wire launched on Sept. 20, 1940, the Journal has offered readers an informal look at the capital. Now online, the Wire provides a succession of glimpses at what’s happening behind hot stories and warnings of what to watch for in the days ahead. The Wire is led by Reid J. Epstein, with contributions from the rest of the bureau. Washington Wire now also includes Think Tank, our home for outside analysis from policy and political thinkers.